‘Drunk’ on New Year’s Eve, Ronnie Lessa revealed frustrated attempt to kill Marielle, says whistleblower

In the award-winning delation that closed with the Rio Public Ministry, former PM Élcio Queiroz, defendant for the murder of councilor Marielle Franco and driver Anderson Gomes, reported an unsuccessful attempt to murder the parliamentarian, prior to her execution in March 2018. The episode generated revolt by the executor of the shots, Ronnie Lessa. Queiroz says that he found out about this episode at the turn of the year, on December 31, 2017, when he spent New Year’s Eve with Lessa, at the former PM’s house in Condomínio Vivendas da Barra. Three months later, Élcio Queiroz drove the car in which Lessa killed Marielle and Anderson.

The report implicates, in addition to Lessa, former firefighter Maxwell Simões Correa – Suel, arrested on the morning of this Monday, the 24th, as the main target of Operation Élpis – and Edimilson Oliveira da Silva – the ‘Macalé’, who was murdered in November 2021. According to Élcio, Ronnie Lessa ‘drank a lot’ in the new year and ‘began to vent, disgusted’, saying that weeks before he would have gone, with Suel and Macalé, to ‘pick up the woman they had been monitoring for a few months’, but ‘the car had a problem’.

“We had already had enough to drink, then in a venting tone he commented to me that he was upset, that he had been at work for some time and had the opportunity to target a woman who would be a woman. He, Suel and Macalé had that job. would be Ronnie, the other one in the back seat would be Edimilson Macalé”, reported Élcio.

“Ronnie thought there was a reject, the car had a problem, he asked to pair it, it was a taxi; this person, this woman would be in a taxi and had an opportunity, but when he asked to pair it, the car had a problem; and Ronnie vented to me, saying that he did not believe there was a problem, that it was fear, he refused”, he completed.

On that occasion, the driver of the car would be Maxwell, arrested this morning. In the passenger seat was Ronnie, with his machine gun – an MP5 diverted from the Battalion of Police Special Operations (BOPE) when the building of the so-called “elite squad” of the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro caught fire. In the backseat, as ‘containment’, was Macalé, with an AK47.

According to Élcio Queiroz, in the frustrated attempt to kill Marielle, the trio used the same car that the whistleblower drove, in March 2018, on the day that the councilwoman and her driver Anderson Gomes were murdered. The cobalt ended up ‘perforated’, dismantled, narrated the former PM to the Police. Élcio detailed the path taken by him and Ronnie Lessa after the execution.

Also according to the denunciation, Lessa, Suel and Macalé had been monitoring Marielle since August 2017. The latter would have participated in all of the councilwoman’s surveillance. Élcio Queiroz also pointed out: “It was even through Edimilson who brought… let’s say, this work for them; this mission for them was through Macalé, which reached Ronnie”.

Queiroz narrated that the surveillance took place in the search for a ‘window of opportunity’. “And this window of opportunity appeared, because they were always prepared for immediate employment, and in that opportunity there was the rejection”, he pointed out.

The whistleblower said Lessa “was clearly upset about missing a window of opportunity.” “Precisely because he missed an opportunity that the other times he didn’t have an opportunity like this, as clear as this time, which would only be the car and their car”.